mornington bear i first met him outside our house at 08:12 on Monday morning perched on a wee little chair like mornington king i was late for a safeguarding training we met again 5 days later he was sitting in a dark corner of No 13 i let him into the sunlit conservatory where he studied old collectors books on Sunday morning he begged me to run him a bath – he had a proper splash kept singing […]

“Die Suche nach einer bewohnbaren Sprache in einem bewohnbaren Land”* The last time I travelled back from Germany to London – my Wahlheimat (which my dictionary translates with ‘adopted home’ but that doesn’t really convey that sense of warmth, choice and voluntariness of the German phrase) – was in late November, just over a week after the devastating attacks in Paris. I travelled with my friend Katharine; we had to change trains in Stuttgart and […]

cycling home I cycle home to East London after a heavy autumn shower. The wet tarmac sparkles in the evening sun; pictures of blue sky in puddles. Anatomically sharp. dead cigarette butts float in the oily puddle rainbows emerge Down an alley of plane trees that arch above me like a gothic cathedral, the canopy dense and dark, stretching right into the sky, poking holes through which the evening light falls like through […]

a place for my part-time job i’m based in peckham, in an office overlooking loads of roofs with pigeon-covered chimneys and barbed wire to the one side, long stretches of boarded off industrial waste land to the other side, and an ugly purpose-built complex behind us. i don’t know what this was ever used for when it was used – when i started in peckham it was empty, abandoned by the previous residents. some […]

surreal i can’t quite decide which of the things that hit me this past week i find most surreal: the picture that was painted of London at a public meeting in bow about the olympic missiles, which was one of a security obsessed Government (spending more money on the olympic security operation than it’s predecessor China!) that’s driven by politics of fear and promotes the militarisation of our city in the name of “security”. or […]

tradition (2) we have a tradition in the community i live in to spend the may bank holiday weekend together – usually going away to the country side. this year for some practical reasons the going-away didn’t work out so we’re spending the weekend-away at home. we had to do the same 2 years ago, and it seemed that this set so much creativity free in us to make sure we still have great quality […]

quality time we’re decorating our living room at the moment. i’m enjoying getting my hands dirty and running around in paint-stained clothes all day. i also enjoy our beautiful old-fashioned wooden ladder and how safe i feel on it. and i’ve enjoyed our on the spot consensus-making after realising that the colours we chose don’t go together, trying to consider as much as possible also that person’s view who was not around at that moment. […]

Unexpected This week has brought a lot of surprises and unexpected glimpses of fun, joy and light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel moments! Among others it included a cocktail party on the 21st floor of a tower block in Hackney, launching the fireplace season at home, a stimulating workshop on the role of apology after violence, a difficult & powerful conversation with a severely depressed parent, and confirming an event for our company deep:black at Rich Mix in January to […]

Tower Blocks Last weekend I was travelling in Germany and not able to update my blog; I wanted to do something particularly great to compensate. But then I was struck by self-made disaster (which is all the more disastrous because I haven’t yet forgiven myself for it) and drowned my beloved compact camera in my rucksack – I hadn’t closed my water bottle properly and about half a liter escaped. I’m still very angry at […]

empty I took this picture in our street a few weeks ago; I’m not really sure what it actually is. Was. But I remembered it earlier this week when a friend told me that the eviction at Dale Farm was due to to begin. There’s something very surprising and sad about this cut-in-half room on a lorry that looks like a dolls house; “play with me”. But where are the dolls? Where’s the dolls’ furniture, […]